be a proud atheist

So I’m at Thanksgiving dinner at my grandma’s house. Its a big crowd, 40+ people. We’re not all sitting around one big table or anything, more like scattered at tables spread through four rooms. Someone calls us all into the dining/kitchen area. I”m thinking its time to get in the line for the food, but turns out its for a prayer.

What to do? In the past, I pretended to pray.
But thats exactly the kind of thing I want to stop doing. Its a terrible kind of lie and makes me feel like I’m hiding who I am.

So I coochy-cooed the newest member of the family (2 weeks old, so cute!) who happened to be on my sister’s nearby sholder. As the prayer went long I looked around the room. Most heads were bowed. Some people like me just standing, waiting. Some people with eyes open looking around. I caught eye contact from two people who gave me this acusing look like “why aren’t you praying? I caught you.”, both times from people who are very religious.

Being “caught” made me proud of myself for not pretending.

I recently joined Facebook and I surprised myself by not wanting to put “Atheist” in the religious views field. It was so tempting to just leave blank, as its right in the spotlight at the top of the page, and I left a lot of the other fields in that area blank. Also, my Facebook is connected up to network for my company. In a way, I kind of feel like my religious views are not anyone’s business but my own. But I do feel that atheism is something that does kind of fit my personality and my world view, so I felt I should put it up. In the end I decided to be honest and I put “I just don’t buy it”, which I think sums up my views much more completely than the simple word “atheist”.

I went to a catholic wedding.

I’d never been in a catholic church before and was surprised by both the similarities and the differences between it and the protestant churches I have been in.

The tricky part was the communion. The priest invited everyone up for communion and said that non-catholics could instead ask for a blessing. Everyone got up and formed into neat lines. I was with two other atheists and we debated amongst ourselves for quite a while and decided to not go up at all. We were the only people on the groom’s side who didn’t go up. I think on the bride’s side too, but I couldn’t really tell the for sure. After everything was over the boyfriend asked why he didn’t see us go up and mentioned again about non-catholics asking for a blessing _{This is as close as I got all day about feeling questioned or challeneged}. I told him that I didn’t want a blessing! He was a bit taken aback by the bluntness I think, but there it is. I’m not just a non-Catholic, or even a non-Christian, I’m an athiest and I’m not comfortable being blessed. I won’t participate in rituals.

After the wedding I had some interesting discussions with the other atheists and found it reassuring that we were having the same reactions to the situation. Good to know that other people feel conflicted about what to do during prayer times or how to politely not get in the communion line without feeling like you’re going to ruin someone’s wedding or are shocked by the number of times the priest mentioned them having kids or wanted to giggle about the rituals that we weren’t familiar with.

I’m debating marking this as done.

But then again, I haven’t been challenged or confronted with it in quite a long time. So, I’m not exactly sure how I will react the next time someone assumes I share their religion and I have to correct them. I suppose I’ll leave this open until next time it happens.

For me this is about not letting people assume that I’m a Christian when I’m not. I’m not going to get all preachy or try to convert people because I hate it when they do that to me. But I am not going to sit by and let people assume. In the past I have simply said “I’m not religious” when the topic came up. Many people (especially my relatives) take that to mean that I’m a Christian but I don’t go to church and am not practicing. From now on I will say “I’m an atheist” or “I don’t believe in God”.

While I’ve been an athiest for years, I just made this a “thing” last week and I’ve already failed one time. Its so hard to stand up to certain people.

In this case it was my grandmother, and it was over email. She sent me a forward about taking back Christmas from the non-Christians and to be sure to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays and all that. I am hugely insulted to receive such a hateful email disguised as spreading cheer! I really wanted to send a reply that told her that I celebrate Christmas as a secular celebration of giving, charity and family. I am one of those non-Christians that she thinks is ruining the holiday and I am really hurt that she feels so hateful (or is forwarding something hateful) towards people like me. I did not say these things to my grandmother. I know that even if she knew the truth she’d still want me to participate in the family tradtitions and probably was just forwarding the email without thinking about if she even agreed with everything it said. Rather than cause her grief I just deleted the email, same as I do when she sends me fowards about the dangers for plastic in the microwave or about ankle slashers in parking lots.